Remembering School Dances and the Uncertainty of Adolescence

Junior High ~ Punk Dance

The 1980s

I loved getting ready for school dances. My best friend, C, and I would try on outfits, style each other’s hair, and apply make-up. This was unusual for us since we were jocks. Our normal school attire consisted of jeans, sweatshirts, runners, and barrettes or ponytails. Playing dress-up was fun, even if we did burn our ears with the curling iron, use a coat hanger to zip our Jordache jeans, and backcomb our hair until we defied Newton and his laws. All the while we’d giggle and be ourselves for the last time that Friday night.

Once we’d arrived at the gym, we’d join other girls and dance in a large circle. The boys lined the walls, leaning, joking, watching. I did the side-to-side shuffle with my feet, never sure what to do with my arms. I’d watch other girls and would try to mimic them, certain that they were dancing the right way. I seemed to hover above the circle, observing everyone, judging myself. How could someone so comfortable in that same gym with her basketball body not own it when she was dancing in the dark?

Eventually, the DJ would play a slow song, maybe Against All Odds, maybe Every Rose Has Its Thorn. C would find her boyfriend. She always had one. I never did. I’d pause momentarily near the court’s centerline, checking for any movement approaching. Inevitably, there was none. I’d follow the sheep into the fluorescent-lit hallway. I’d slurp water from the fountain and reenter the noisy darkness, searching for any girl I knew. I’d stand beside her and would watch the couples dancing: the straight-armed nervous ones, shuffling heavily in a repetitive side step; and the couply-couples draping their bodies over each other, hands roaming, feet anchored.

When the next ballad followed, there was both hope and terror as boys walked nearby.

Please ask me to dance.

Please don’t ask me to dance.

Sometimes I did get asked to dance, often by a boy a head shorter than me, a boy whose sleepy eyes were level with my breasts.

Don’t look at them.

Don’t look at my eyes either.

Don’t.

Do.

Sometimes a boy much older would ask me to dance. A boy whose wiry body knew what he wanted.

Reader Interactions

Comments

Yes, we had school dances in the 1960s and they were similar to your experience. I went to an all girls school and the only chance we really had to interact with boys was at the dances. Boyes were less shy about asking girls to dance since no one knew each other. I met several boyfriends at these dances. They were an important part of high school.

Leanne, you captured it perfectly! I am writing about prom – and this is is. The push-pull of it. They pieces are different yet similar. Mine isn’t quite ready to go, but it’s close. We are always about that close. You’re just faster. And, per usual, you say it more succinctly. Beautiful. And really different from your other stuff. I see you are, perhaps, branching out a la Kristen Lamb? 😉 Good things, my friend.

This is a great post. I never missed a jr. high dance. (7th – 9th grade – we had three year high school.) Anyway, Stairway to Heaven was ALWAYS the final song. If you didn’t get asked to dance by someone, or you had the sense that icky dude was about to come your way we would dash out into the hall and hide out in the girl’s bathroom. Better that then have to be all sweaty with some lamo guy.

One time I was slow dancing and I had my arms under his arms instead of on his shoulders and I kind of froze. I didn’t re-position them, so he was right against my chest. Ewe. I didn’t know what to do, so I endured with all of his buddies leering and all of my friends doing funny OMG faces… He asked me to ‘go with him’ the 80’s term for ‘going steady. We lasted through the weekend. Ewe!

How effortlessly you’ve captured it all! I can smell the hairspray from here!

Boys never asked me to dance so I remember watching that couple, you know the one: her hair feathered perfectly, her mum let her wear eyeliner and frosted pink lipstick and she let her boyfriend tuck his hand into the back pocket of her jeans.

Stairway to Heaven. You didn’t need to say anything else. In my case, there must have been something powerful about the song because, after going our separate ways for many years, that guy I first looked at across the 7th grade cafeteria, I just looked at again as he packed the goodwill boxes in his car and kissed me and the boys goodbye. 🙂

Dances even in the 50’s were the same. The one dance every year was my favorite: Sadie Hawkins Day Dance. Role-reversal reigned during those – but the emotions ran the same. How odd. “Marryin’ Sam” got a load of business that night.

The other dances were full of self-doubt and abject terror of being rejected when asking for a dance. So, it seems, that both sides of the fence had things to be nervous about. It’s a wonder any progress was made at all. But, of course, we know it was made.

All of the middle school dances I went to, I just hung out with the girls. High school was mostly the same until my senior year. That’s when guys actually started to “like” me as more than a friend. Such a late bloomer.

My cousin told me about the time when our grandmother was staying at their house, and she was ready to head out the door to a Grade 7 & 8 dance, when Grandma objected to her going to a dance in jeans, and insisted that my cousin put on a dress. My cousin was mortified at the very idea. Everyone wore jeans to school dances, so she would be a laughingstock if she showed up in a skirt. She appealed to her mother (my aunt) and begged her to explain to our grandmother and allow her to wear the jeans. My lovely, kind aunt, who was nevertheless always a people pleaser, instead asked her to go and put a dress on. My cousin burst into tears, and never went to that dance. I felt so badly for her, especially when her mother didn’t stand up for her. Peer pressure can be a horrifying thing, and but so can families! Jodi

This is adolescence perfection. What is it about brightly lit hallways and water fountains that told the boys, “We’re too busy to dance, so don’t even bother asking, even though I know you weren’t gonna.”

You hit the nail right on the head. It is funny that a former class mate just posted his class picture of grade 9 on facebook. That picture & your blog has brought back ohhh so many memories, some good others not.

I have loved coming over here for a giggle. You write so very well when you’re being funny – and now I see this other, lovely glimpse of your spirit. Well done – really, really well done. You’ve got it – all that inner angst, those warring emotions, that uncertainty mixed with curiosity — just wait until Thing 1 and Thing 2 are at that point. I really, really, really loved it when my kids got to that tweener/early adolescence stage! But it also stirs all kind of memories, very much like the ones you’ve so beautifully captured here. Thank you.

Being regected by all the girls at a dance. The only good one was when I asked the most popular girl to a dance and she said yes. Then I was herassed for months. I hated high school glad I’m done and won’t look back

My favorite part of dances was the end of stairway to heaven where it picks up significantly and you can no longer dance slowly in a circle and you end up just standing there trying to think of something to say

Ok, first? Your Jr. High legs were gorgeous. Just sayin’. As for the school dances… I both loved and hated them. The “fast songs” were fun, since I was such an awesome dancer *cough* The slow songs were torture. Boys NEVER asked me to dance. It was such an uncomfortable feeling, not knowing whether to stand there and watch the couples or retreat to the corner and pretend I didn’t care.

You are “The Sweetest” if you say that.I had short little terrycloth volleyball shorts on underneath. I had put masking tape over the side Adidas’ stripes so you wouldn’t see them through my father’s dress shirt.

Middle school: moving from my town of 18,000 to a real city with a couple million people when my parents got divorced, one dance at the end of the year and I wore a pretty dress and everyone made fun of me because they thought I worshipped satan, and clearly, satanists weren’t supposed to wear dresses. (Glad that’s over) I fared better in high school with dances at church (god church, not satan church) with the youth group and they were exactly like you described. I once feigned a breakup with a boy because the false ending of that Night Ranger song had me leaving the dance floor before the song was really over.

Growing up in the middle east, we didnt have dances to go to. But there was this one time when we had the end of the summer activities in our church with a party where there was dancing.

A girl I actually liked asked me to dance, well I guess she got bored waiting for me to ask or decided that if she waited for me to ask hell would freeze over, and like an idiot, I told her I had hurt my foot. I spent the rest of the party limping around.

This was totally hilarious! Every Rose Has Its Thorn indeed, and my Jr High dances were filled with them. Girls bawling because the boy they liked was asking other girls to dance and ignoring them even though they’d decided in advance that they were each others dates even though the school didn’t actually allow ‘dates’ to the dance. Mascara-drenched tears, peach-colored dresses, and 80s music. Gotta love it!

Oh lord. I played the piano (I say that because since I had kids…well…I don’t play much) and I also sang (which I did after kids, but years of “Twinkle Twinkle Traffic Light” takes the edge off the pipes)…

I can recall thousands of private or semi-private (due to well-intentioned friends willing to suffer) performances of “Against All Odds.”

I’m pretty sure if I close my eyes, I can still feel the sincerity oozing from me. (or is it Noxema?)

“When I stand here taking every breath with you……ooh ooh. You’re the only one who really knew me at all…”

And DAMN did I mean it.

Also, “Faithfully,” by Journey. Because really, what teenager isn’t ready to make the lifetime commitment promised in that song?

Dead on Leanne! I vividly remember the gangly teenage boys who wallpapered the edge of the gym, too self-conscious to dance but too interested in the goings on to leave. So we girls did the only thing we could do and danced with other girls. I’m now 48 and still dance at social events with other women whose husbands — like mine — hate to dance. But I’m doing something about it for the next generation. I’ve had my eight year old son in dance lessons for four years. I’ve told him in a few years he’ll “clean up” on the dance floor with the beautiful girls while the legions of boys who had only hockey lessons will continue wallpapering the gym walls. Some things never change.

I loved this post, Leanne…those boys weren’t very bright! You were (and still are) gorgeous!

I went to all the dances in middle school (Grade 7 and 8 in Ontario)…I was also the girl who rarely got asked to dance. However, I didn’t let that stop me…I just asked the boys to dance, for fast songs, at least!

It was the mid-70’s. Some of the songs that remind me of those dances were: “Takin’ Care of Business”, “American Pie”, “Smoke on the Water”, “Crocodile Rock”, and “Locomotion”. One of the waltzes I remember watching jealously was “You Are So Beautiful.”

I still love to dance to fast songs, but haven’t done it for a long time (except to embarrass the children)…

I know this is year later, but just tonight I heard the song and I asked myself WHY Stairway to Heaven was ALWAYS the last song at dances through my middle and high school years (in Richmond Hill – 1973-81). ‘Still don’t know why, but your post was deliciously evocative of those years: if only I’d known then what I know now…who’m I kidding; I’d still be a geek! Loved the post though.